The phrase ‘the land in winter’ is the house words for House Stark in George RR Martin’s A Game of Thrones, serving as a warning of the long, cold months and hard, dangerous times ahead. Andrew Miller has used these words aptly as the title of his Booker-shortlisted The Land in Winter, taking up the twin strands of a bleak winter in the West Country of England and the potentially perilous paths trodden by two couples living in a village there, and making of it a moving, beautifully written tale.
Set in the early 60s, the shadow of WW2 still seems to hang over the land. Eric Parry is the local doctor, much liked for his calm demeanour, which the reader soon discovers hides some strong opinions. He is married to Irene, who comes from wealthy stock, but is trying her best to be a good wife. Their neighbours are Bill Simmons, a newbie farmer who is struggling with his smallholding, and Rita, his wife with a somewhat disreputable past. Irene and Rita bond over their first pregnancies, Eric and Bill have a mutual antipathy which is never really explained, and the reader immediately senses that, for all the nuance, none of the characters are dealt with sympathy.
The storyline follows a discomfiting track, yet the reader is fully drawn into it, taking in everything the writer lays out in detailed precision. The contrast between Irene, who is doing her best to conform to what she thinks society requires of her, and Rita, who is, albeit lazily, fighting both conformity as well as her inner demons, is striking. Another contrast is the somewhat patronising affection Eric has for his wife, set against Bill’s real affection. All four have thinly concealed secrets; both couples are sitting on a powder keg.
Sure enough, things begin to unravel—relationships, reputations—even as winter settles in, swathing the land in snow, frost, blizzards, zero temperatures.
Miller’s style is anything but sparse; he provides great detail to the terrain, the vegetation, the cottages, and the personalities of those who live there. Lines like these stand out: Under the grey looming of the trees, the car flowed like water. She made a caress out of language. He sometimes thought she…might choose to bring the house down simply to find out what kind of noise it made. Those years were white ash to be dusted from his hands.
The dedication is an intriguing one: to the musicians, it says. And on the epigraph page, there is a haunting quote from Sylvia Plath: Winter is for women. The story opens with a chilling account of a death in an asylum, which the reader comes to find out is a suicide. As the plot seems to swerve left after this passage, the reader wonders if it’s a Chekov’s gun device; ultimately, it ties up at the end, not neatly but in an explanatory manner.
Miller details devastation as a slow creep: inevitable, and no less damaging for its measured pace. His writing is controlled, but so masterly, the words form into pictures on the page.